in England have mostly espoused the Southern side of the quarrel; thus demonstrating that their moral scruples have no higher source than their own political advantage, and no more lofty end than to divide and distract a sister-nation.  Of these we may instance the most conspicuous of all, Lord Brougham,—­who, after having for half a century derived all the benefit he could from the striking and pathetic points in slavery to vivify his eloquence, turns the bitter vial of his dotage against those who stake everything upon its extinction.  But everybody knows that Lord Brougham is a type of those statesmen who stand by the people in the Commons and grind the people in the Lords; who, after crying down public wrongs, upon finding the responsibility of a coronet on their shoulders, suddenly become arrant sticklers for hereditary rights.  We are amused to notice, among those peers who have risen above the selfishness by which they are surrounded, and have given us a well-timed sympathy, but few who are of new creations:  for the Duke of Argyle and the Earls of Carlisle and Clarendon are descendants of the oldest and proudest houses in the realm.

It is gratifying to observe that those forces which are operating against us are those which are rapidly losing that control in public affairs which belonged to past phases of society; while those forces which are proper to the present, and are inevitably to assume the preponderance in the future, appear as they develop to be more and more sympathetic with the cause of our national integrity.  Aristocratic prestige is shrinking back before an advancing enlightenment which elevates all to equal dignity.

The present ministry is a fair type of the selfishness of British statesmanship.  The antecedents of its principal members are those of timeserving politicians.  Lord Palmerston, starting on his career as a Tory of the Wellington stamp, has veered round as the tide has turned against his former associates, and is the still distrusted representative of the Liberal party.  Lord Russell, in the youth of his public service a Radical reformer, and the eager disciple of Sir Francis Burdett when Sir Francis Burdett could not lead a corporal’s guard, once the prop and hope of those who sought a wider suffrage, has again and again eaten his own words, and the history of his political life is a ludicrous illustration of the perplexities of politicians.  His invariable course as a diplomatist has been to leave the way open to prevarication, to keep his opinions in a cloud, and to confound sense with ambiguity.  It would be pure credulity to place much confidence in the expressions of a statesman who within two months boldly censured and then as boldly favored the designs of Victor Emmanuel on Venice, officially and unblushingly before all Europe.  Both these noble lords, however, are fortunate in a keen appreciation of the national prejudices, and know how to make use of the existing tone of public feeling.  A long vicissitude of